Taiwan is Moving Closer to the United States
Is China’s shaping of Taiwan’s domestic political space an opportunity for the U.S.?
The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin…
The increasingly well-defined space the PRC is imposing on Taiwan’s domestic political order with respect to China policy implies an opportunity for the U.S. not merely to woo Taiwan’s leadership but to upgrade its relationship with Taiwan’s people.
An Unreformed KMT
In the run-up to the by-election this month for the Chair of the Kuomintang (KMT) Party in Taiwan, there was much media speculation that Johnny Chiang 江啟臣, at 48 the younger of the two candidates, would make some changes to the 1992 Consensus. Both before and immediately after the election, Chiang was portrayed as a “reformist” in the local media (also here, which notes his US Ph.D.) and in the international media. This was highly amusing to those of us here in Taichung who were familiar with Chiang as a local politician, married to the daughter of a local faction politician, and backed by powerful Taichung area factions.
The 1992 Consensus is a fictional agreement that allegedly took place between the non-elected representatives of two authoritarian parties, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the KMT, in Singapore in 1992. The term was popularized by KMT heavyweight Su Chi beginning with the 2000 election, but it actually first occurred three years earlier in a PRC document. The KMT claims that the two sides agreed on “one China, with two interpretations”. It then put this forward as the basis for its cross-strait policy when President Ma took power in 2008.
1992 Consensus = One country, Two systems
Beijing, for its part, never accepted the “two interpretations” codicil, and put the final nail in the coffin of the 1992 Consensus with Xi’s speech last year in which he equated it with “one country, two systems” (1C2S). Since one country, two systems has been DOA in Taiwan since the late 1990s in credible polls, Xi had made the foundation of the KMT’s cross-strait policy politically toxic in Taiwan.
During the run-up to the election Chiang had hinted there might be changes in the 1992 Consensus. Other major figures in the party, including former President Ma Ying-jeou, argued that the CCP’s rendering of the 1992 Consensus as 1C2S had rendered it obsolete:
China has to take responsibility for skewing the so-called “1992 consensus,” former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said yesterday, adding that Beijing omitted “different interpretations” and only focused on “one China.”
The CCP mouthpiece Global Times responded harshly to KMT hints that the 1992 Consensus might be revised, blasting the KMT:
Chiang Chi-chen [Johnny Chiang] has been elected as the chairman of the Chinese Kuomintang (KMT) Party, and he labeled himself as a “reformist” and hinted at abandoning the anti-separatism tradition of the party, with experts saying he might make the KMT more “localized and pro-US” instead of maintaining mutual trust with the Chinese mainland to promote cross-Straits exchanges and keep the region peaceful.
A Forced Dichotomy
Taiwanese frequently express longing for a party that gets beyond the pan-Blue (pro-China) and pan-Green (pro-Taiwan) divide in Taiwan’s domestic politics. The CCP’s remarks show why there is no such space: it is China that determines the shape of the Blue-Green divide. In its remarks above, the CCP defined Taiwan in terms of two spaces: everyone who is not with us is against us. There will be no fudging of that boundary. Predictably, the “reformist” Chiang of the KMT soon came out with a statement saying the 1992 Consensus will not be changed.
New political parties such as the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), headed by Mayor Ko Wen-je of Taipei, have struggled to carve out some wiggle room, but the CCP permits none. That is why a couple of months ago the TPP announced a China policy that was remarkably similar to the pan-Green ruling Democratic Porgressive Party’s (DPP) — even though the TPP is widely perceived as being a party that leaned pan-Blue. Indeed, part of the problem with its attempt to find a neutral space between the Green/Blue divide was that it appeared Blue-leaning simply because moving away from the pan-Green position on China (which is the mainstream position) automatically made it Blue-tinged. The small New Power Party (NPP) did not even pretend to such neutrality — it aligned immediately with the pan-Green side.
An Opportunity for Closer U.S. Taiwan Relations
The pro-Taiwan position, that Taiwan is an independent state that is not part of the PRC, is mainstream in Taiwan. As Taiwan moves farther from China, it moves closer to the U.S. Naturally, as the PRC pushes on Taiwan’s domestic space, it is pushing that mainstream — often distrustful of the U.S. — toward the U.S. The U.S. needs to take advantage of this moment to address an array of issues, particularly a bilateral trade agreement.
